Ann Durkin Keating

And that is, I think, a crucial part of the story and speaks to the idea that this is a place where there was a possibility of different cultures interacting without destroying each other.

Right.

So, yeah, du Sable is coming out of the south.

He's coming from down near Cahokia.

Or, I mean, there's some question about whether he's come from Quebec, but my sense is that he's coming from the South.

His family may well, his father and mother may have come from Haiti.

That's certainly the oral tradition that I think we need to really keep in mind as we go here.

But Du Sable comes into the region as one of those mixed descent traders.

Now, he is a mixed descent trader of French,

and African origin.

So his mother was of African descent.

And again, that's where the Haitian connection comes in.

And his father was French.

And so the surmises that he or his mother were enslaved, maybe both enslaved people who gained their

freedom.

So he comes into this region, though, as a part of this French trading world.

He joins in, he's trading over in Michigan, so to the east and at Detroit and up in Mackinac.

And he's in this area during the American Revolution.

And after the American Revolution, then he decides to settle at the mouth of the Chicago River.

So he, again, to your point, is the first non-native